VALLEY FORGE

SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.VI June, 1928
No.6

by: Joseph Fort Newton

Address at the 150th Anniversary, French -
American Alliance, Valley Forge, May 5, 1928.

What memories, what historic echoes the very words bring
back to every patriotic heart! What deeds of daring, what almost
superhuman endurance they symbolize in the heroic legend of our country!
As far back as we can remember, in the pride and tenderness of childhood, our
hearts turned to this spot as to a shrine. Today we take off our hats and
lift up our hearts, in homage to the heroism of man and the mercy of God.

Surely he is a strange man, and no American at all, who
can read the story of the winter at Valley Forge, and not feel his warm heart
with a new pulse of love and loyalty to his country, which inspired such
devotion and endurance. Who can walk over the old campground, now a lovely
park, with its memorial Chapel, an exquisite poem in stone, a Gothic shrine both
of patriotism and religion, and not feel that he is indeed on Holy Ground!
Such a day should make us renew our vows to the ideals for which men were ready
and willing to give their all, lest we forget what the liberty we enjoy cost in
sacrifice.

One hundred and fifty years ago this land was the scene
of events of vast import and moment, the meaning of which is felt today, not
only in our institutions, but in the life of the world. Not simply a new
nation, but a new kind of nation was struggling to birth in a new world, a
nation "Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal." It was, indeed, "the last great hope of man;" and at
Valley Forge the issue hung in the balance - due to profound discouragement of
the people.

Lexington, Bunker Hill and Saratoga were behind;

Monmouth, Stony Point and Yorktown were ahead.
Between lay the snows of Valley Forge, when the people were depressed, the Army
well-nigh demoralized, its moral almost broken, and the fortunes of freedom were
at their lowest ebb. If despair had been possible, our fathers would have
been the victims of it in that awful ordeal of winter, both in weather and in
spirit, when the Chief city of the land was the playground of the enemy, and the
ragged remnant of the army, decimated by disease, at times almost starving, was
shivering on the hills of Valley Forge.

Even in the brief, austere official documents of the day
we realize that the hardship of this camp was more trying than the hazard of
battle; and the diaries and letters of the day which gave the vivid human color
of the scene makes its details poignant. Huddled in a city of huts, under
an icy sky, half-clothed and half-fed, the cause of freedom almost lost, tempted
by offers of compromise, and, in the light of a glimmering lamp in a cottage
window a tall form pacing to and fro, waiting, watching, planning, praying -
such is the picture, and such is its meaning in our history. Valley Forge
was not a battlefield where men met the thrilling issues of a conflict; it was a
campground where they waited, suffered and endured. It has a glory all its
own, a fame complete and perfect, from which nothing can detract, to forget
which would be sacrilege.

The obvious strategy of Washington was to keep the
British from cutting the Colonies in two, dividing their strength, and defeating
their hopes. Lexington and Bunker Hill were memorable, but in nowise vital
as compared with the battles that raged about Philadelphia.

The danger lay in the middle states of the long coast
line. If a wedge could be driven through the center of the colonial
domain, separating their forces and resources, the rebellion, as it was regarded
in England, would be broken. But it was not to be so, thanks to the God of
history who gave us a leader and Commander who, alike in symmetry of character
and splendor of achievement, is one of the greatest men in the records of
mankind. Frederick the Great said that the Trenton campaign was the most
brilliant of the century, and it was the century of himself and Marlborough.
But Washington was supreme, not alone in flashes of genius, such as amaze us in
Alexander and dazzle us in Naploleon, but no less in more useful and less
glittering gifts which won the loyalty of his people, and led him through the
intrigues of friends and the treachery of foes to victory. In the whole
story of the race there is no man to surpass him in disinterested nobility, in
practical capacity, solid wisdom and majesty of moral character.

It was the military strategy of Washington to prevent the
colonial republic from being divided and defeated, it was diplomatic strategy of
Franklin and his fellow workers to divide Europe and, if possible, enlist aid
for our struggling cause. For several years, work to that end had been
going on secretly, and in the autumn of 1777 it became open and distinct, which
no doubt explains the conciliatory Bills, offering everything except
independence, received and rejected by Congress in April 1778, under the
influence of Washington saying, "that nothing but independence would do" In the
meantime, von Steubon was training the army in tactics and discipline such as it
had not know before; and Lafayette - "the Boy," as Cornwallis called him,
derisively - alike by his gallant courage and chivalrous friendship helped to
keep American hopes alive.

At last, after no end of doubt, delay and intrigue.
during which Franklin revealed his extraordinary tact, patience and skill; on
February 6th, Treaties of Amity, Commerce and Alliance were signed
between France and the United States. The Independence of America was
acknowledged and made the basis of alliance, and it was mutually agreed that
neither nation would lay downits arms until
England had conceded our freedom and separate nationhood. A fleet, an
army, munitions and supplies were promised by the King of France, who
immediately declared war on Great Britain. So, America was united, and
Europe was divided, and the issue of liberty in the new world was no longer in
doubt.

All historians agree to regard this as the turning-point
in our struggle for independence; and so it was. But neither the fleet of
France nor her armies were as valuable to America at that moment, as the moral
effect, both at home and abroad, of the Alliance. It electrified our
country; it cemented a discouraged and distracted people; it restored their
shattered morale, when, at eleven o'clock at night, May 4th, the news
of the French Treaty reached Washington at Valley Forge - so long did it take
the tidings to travel.

May the 6th was a gala day, by General orders;
the army, after impressive religious services of thanksgiving and joy, was drawn
up under arms; salutes were fired; cheers were given for the King of France and
the United States; and in the evening a banquet was given by the
Commander-in-Chief to his officers. Today we are met on this campground of
an eternal fame and friendship, to celebrate the anniversary of the thrilling
event, mingling prayer and play, as was done of old; beseeching the God of our
fathers to make us worthy of a history so noble, a legacy so sacred, and a
heritage so heroic.

Once again, after one hundred and fifty years, we have
heard the voice of France, the land of Lafayette, in the words of its brilliant
Minister of State, appealing to America, the land of Washington, to join hands,
as in the days agone, in a treaty, openly arrived at, outlawing war between the
two nations forever, as the basis and beginning of a better world order.
Truly he is a strange man who can read such a gallant proposal, so definitely
made by a practical statesman, and not feel his heart beat faster. What
hopes and visions fill the mind as one reads the calm measured words of a great
son of France, offering an olive branch of perpetual peace, and the settlement
of all disputes by reason and law, thereby giving an example of civilized life
to all the world:

"If there were need for those two great democracies to
give high testimony to their desire for peace, and to furnish to other peoples
an example more solemn still, France would be willing to subscribe publicly with
the United States to any mutual engagement tending to outlaw war as between
those two countries. Every engagement entered into in this spirit by the
United States toward another nation such as France would contribute greatly in
the eyes of the world to broaden and strengthen the foundations on which the
international policy of peace is being erected."

Here are great words of prophetic overture, worthy to be
set to music; and the land of Washington has made memorable response to a spirit
so fine and a gesture so gracious. They err who say, cynically, that no
good came out of the mad hell of the world war, when in the open forum of the
world, two great republics - bound by a common historic faith and friendship -
lead the way to the enthronement of law above force and reason above passion, in
behalf of a creative and cooperative goodwill. It makes a kinder light
from a higher sky fall upon this old campground, and upon the little white
crosses in France, where heroes sleep together, since, by the goodwill of God,
it shows that they did not die in vain.

At last, or soon or late, so the prophets forfeit and
proclaimed by a Divine pragmatism, men will learn that only the ideal is
actually practical, and that only when societies and institutions are built
square with the righteous order of the world, will they endure. The path
of man through the ages is littered with the wreckage of states and
civilizations fallen into dust, because they built upon force and not upon
brotherhood. So runs the record of centuries, as far back as written
history goes.

Must it be so always? Is man too blind to see and
too stupid to learn that the visible is set in the Invisible, and that it is the
spiritual - seemingly so impalpable and frail - that finally rules, and must
rule, because the universe is made on that plan? Today it means much that
practical men are beginning to see what poets and prophets have proclaimed from
time immemorial - that moral and spiritual laws are universal, and that man is
wise only when he learns the way God is going and makes a highway for the
Eternal Will.

Today, on these hills of Valley Forge, as we celebrate an
alliance for war, may we devoutly hope and pray that God has brought us far
enough down the ways of time and tragedy that we are ready, by His Grace, to
make a great Alliance for Peace, led by two mighty peoples who more than once
have been one in arts, arms, and ideals - France lending aid in the founding of
our Republic, and America lending aid in the salvation of France and so, by a
grand adventure of practical and constructive fraternity, lay the corner stone
of a new order of the ages, making peace a law and not a dream!